Internet vs. Telephone company

Sat Feb 1 01:24:19 UTC 1997

>An interesting article was posted by the Seattle Times yesterday,  
>it's at:
>http://www.seattletimes.com/topstories/browse/html97/inet_013097.html
>This was the Jan 30, 1997 issue. In it, Diedtra Henderson writes:

>"US West serves 2.2 million customers in Washington state and  
spent >$340
>million improving its phone system here last year, a spokesman  
said. >The company blames a meteoric rise in Internet use for its  
>phone-service woes.
>[SNIP]
>"For the next five years we are in big trouble. There is no clear,
>intelligent way to expand the phone system to handle the Internet
>demands," said Lu, who expects metered Internet access in the  
future >- in
>other words, you pay by the hour. "

>My question is:  Have other people heard of similar attempts by the
>telephone companies to have "metered Internet access"?  It seems >they
>would need a hardware level signal analyzer on their switching  
>equipment
>to differentiate between voice/data.  Does anyone know by what  
means >such
>a technology could be implemented?  What would be the legal  
>ramifications?

>Also do people agree with the claims that our local lack of >available
>phone lines is due to Internet usage or just to lack of foresight in
>growth management decisions?

I think we're missing the point.  They aren't just going to charge  
hourly for data service, but for all service.

It really wasn't that long ago they were doing this (US West  
stopped in the late 70's or early 80's

All they are going to need to do is notify customers and turn the  
old billing procedures back on, they already track hourly usage  
anyway.

>Tony Torzillo
>----------------------------------------------------------------
>Network Specialist, UW Network Operations Center, 543-5128
>EMAIL:  ndc-noc at cac.washington.edu, torzillo at cac.washington.edu
>----------------------------------------------------------------